Giving the Bear a hug

I've been paying and using Bear for years now. I much prefer the interface design to the default Apple Notes app (plus my pal Vic does all the illustration work for Bear which is class). Though I have been using it, I don't think I've really been using it enough. I've primarily used it for writing-based stuff. So, blog posts, story ideas etc, and that's about it.

With the closure of Pocket imminent, it forced me to sort out an alternative for my "Read later" list. Of course, my first thought was going very old-school with Instapaper but I'm not particularly keen on the UI so I kept looking. Shortly after I realised Inoreader, the app I use for RSS feeds, also has a "Read later" feature so I ported my Pocket list over there and closed down my Pocket account (something I felt quite sad about, to be honest. I've been a Pocket user since 2012 or earlier).

What's this all got to do with Bear?

Well, the consolidation of my Read Later feed with my RSS feed got me thinking of where I can make similar consolidations and this is where Bear comes in.

Bullet journal

I've used bullet journaling off and on as a way to manage my daily tasks at work, using notebooks I make myself. The general process works quite well but my handwriting is shocking at the best of times and if I happen to forget my notebook when I'm out and about, then it's sort of useless.

I decided to start a top-level Bullet Journal tag in Bear and I add a new note for each day. At the top go my todos for that day which I can easily edit or update as the day progresses and as each day is just a new note, if I get asked to do something later in the week, I just create a note ahead of time and stick the todo in there.

Now all I need to do first thing in the morning is open the app and find today's note (if there is one) and I'm ready to go.

I also use this same note to jot down anything I need to remember from that day. Discussions, meeting notes or decisions made so I can refer back to them at any point.

Bookmarks

I've gone through many bookmark services over the years. The one I've been using recently is Raindrop, an app which ticks the boxes from a UI perspective so I don't really have any issue with it aside from it being yet another service I have running.

The way Raindrop organises links is essentially in folders, much like Bear's tagging system so I figured it makes sense to store stuff in Bear.

None of this is revolutionary, I'm sure loads of people do something similar and probably more. For now though, I'm happy to have consolidated two things into one place and I'll keep looking for other areas where I can utilise Bear and get the most out of it.